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Cathy Buckle’s letter from Zimbabwe

Dear Family and Friends,
The ticking ofï¿½Zimbabwe’s time bombï¿½is getting louder and faster by the day. Power sharing talks have again collapsed;ï¿½cholera isï¿½spreading and the death toll rising; teachers, nurses and doctors are demanding payment in US dollars in order to report for dutyï¿½and the poverty of most families is growing worse by the day.
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There is nowï¿½nothing you can buy in Zimbabwe dollars as even roadside vegetable vendors have resorted to selling their wares in US dollars or South African Rand. A handful of tomatoes, aï¿½bunch of onions,ï¿½half aï¿½ dozen bananas or even aï¿½single, sweet, stickyï¿½mangoï¿½ – all areï¿½priced in American dollars.ï¿½If you don’t have foreign currency you go hungry, it’sï¿½as simple as that. You also go sick,ï¿½can’t get a bed in a private hospital,ï¿½can’t have a baby, can’t get on a bus, can’t get a passport, can’tï¿½even buy a packet of headache pills.
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The only thing you can do with Zimbabwe dollars,ï¿½ï¿½if you canï¿½get them out of the bank, isï¿½pay your telephone, water, and electricity bills. The authorities runningï¿½Zimbabwe continue to refuse to allow the utilitiesï¿½companies to charge in US dollars and so the services theyï¿½provide have deteriorated to the point of almost complete collapse. Stick thin employees at parastatals wearing threadbare suits continue to report for workï¿½while everything around them falls apart. They have no stationery to invoice customers, no receipt books, no ink for computers.ï¿½Theyï¿½have no answers to the increasingly angryï¿½queriesï¿½from their customers such as why haveï¿½dustbinsï¿½not been collected for eight months; when are blocked sewer pipes going to be cleared, when are cavernous pot holes on the roads going to be filled. These civil servants have littleï¿½reason to go to work anymore and it seems only a matter of time before theyï¿½just don’t bother anymore.ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½
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For people without foreign currency life has become a living hell. A government teacher I met showed me her December pay slip. Her monthly salary was 10 trillion dollars. The exchange rate on the dayï¿½ meant that in a month she had earned just one US dollar. I asked her if she would be returning to the classroom when schools re-open and she said no. She said the bus fare to get to her school on the first day alone would cost herï¿½one US dollar, and then how would she get home, what would she have to eat, how would she get to school the next day.ï¿½
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Zimbabweans are looking to SADC and the African Union in the days ahead. Surely soon they will have to say: enough suffering, enough death, enough?